Reaching Consumers & Monetizing Web Content

Mike Rich

A little over a year ago, AOL embarked on what by any standard was a fundamental transformation of its business model. Instead of a traditional subscriber-based business, AOL was shifting to be an ad-supported Web business. This shift required entirely new ways of thinking about how we do business, who our competitors were, how we thought about programming, even how we would treat our brand.

We had to ask tough questions. What would appeal to consumers – drawing them in, drawing them back, and keeping them engaged? How could we create experiences that we could easily and effectively monetize, without jeopardizing the user experience? How could we reach an increasingly fragmented audience that was less and less reliant on portals to guide them online?

Our struggles were in many ways unique to AOL. But the lessons we learned along the way are, I think, are instructive to traditional television  & recorded music industries as well as radio broadcasting.  Among them:

Stay 100% focused on the consumer. That’s easy to say, difficult to achieve.  But once AOL made the move to free Web content, we fully embraced this concept. After all, if we didn’t, consumers would quickly go to sites that did. One example: We listened to our audience and extended AOL Television from an editorially and listings focused to an all-encompassing video experience that lets users access a myriad of full episodes – from the Simpsons to Lost to CSI – while providing a place for fans to communicate. 

Don’t make them come to you. We’re constantly looking for ways to syndicate our content through widgets, gadgets and desktop applications  so consumers can more easily access it wherever they are. We recently launched a widget for our popular TVs Top 5 franchise, letting fans watch the previous night’s best TV moments directly from their webpage or blog. Our Spinner MP3 of the Day widget feeds a new editor-selected MP3 to music fans each day. We’ve launched Facebook applications for AOL Music and Moviefone. Our AOL Radio application for the iPhone recently won an Apple design award. This is what we call internal as the "Start here finish anywhere, start anywhere finish here" strategy.

Rethink everything. To appeal to today’s consumers, we literally threw out our old way of programming, rethinking our channels from the ground up. For example, we made them more blog-like, which lets us constantly update content   and highlight third-party coverage that is relevant to our audiences and also allows them to comment and connect with other people on the site.

Don’t be wedded to your brand. At the same time, we also realized that in some cases, the AOL brand wasn’t going to help us attract and retain certain audiences. In the music area, for example, we built on our success with Spinner.com (our indie/rock music site) and launched several new lifestyle-focused music sites  or "passion points" including PopEater (for pop music fans), The Boombox (for hip hop/ R&B fans) and The Boot (for country music fans). These are now some of the most heavily trafficked music destinations online. They give music fans a place to discover music and connect with other fans, let emerging artists and labels find huge engaged audiences, and advertisers the ability to reach specific audiences.

Remember that a rising tide lifts all boats.  Our view is simple: by working closely with content creators and respecting their property rights, we can all benefit by the growth of online media consumption. To make our Television programming the best online, for example, we continually work with broadcasters and as a result provide consumers the most comprehensive array of branded content on the Web. AOL is the only network that carries content from all four major broadcast networks and an impressive collection of cable networks. It benefits us – we get great content – but it benefits broadcasters as well. They get increased exposure for their programming, and new opportunities to monetize their content, in an on-demand and interactive environment. Better still, we’re providing a legal outlet for fans to consume media without the risk of violating copyright law.

Embrace change. This is arguably one of the most dynamic industries in history. The Internet lets new experience and new technologies spread almost instantaneously to hundreds of millions of consumers. Consumer trends now change on a dime. Keeping up with this is more than a full time job. But more than that is required. At AOL we’ve learned to embrace change. Long gone are the days of annual software releases. We now have the ability to quickly launch new experiences, promote them, and monetize them. If something isn’t working, we fix it or drop it. It’s meant something of a cultural shift at AOL, but the entire company now recognizes this ethos.

The result? Our programming channels have been experiencing steady and strong growth. In May, our page views were up an incredible 78% from the year before. AOL Television alone attracted 12.8 million unique visitors in May, an all-time high. AOL Music reported an impressive 603 million page views. Several of our channels are now in the No. 1 spot in their respective categories, either in terms of unique visitors, page views or both, according to comScore Media Metrics.

While the particulars of AOL’s experience may not apply directly to more traditional media.  I’m confident that the tough lessons AOL has had to learn over the past year will lead to success for anyone who embraces them.

--By Mike Rich, Sr. Vice President, AOL. He heads up AOL Music, AOL Television, Moviefone, Asylum, Black Voices and Urlesque.